This is my first Christmas without my parents. This loss, more than any other, has plunged me into a memory overload kind of holiday season. In the past, no matter what loss or change or struggle I was dealing with, I would put it in a box and seal it shut till after the new year.
But this year, I decided that I was going to feel everything. I have allowed myself the sadness, the anger, the longing, and the lonely orphaned feelings.
The one thing that is really helping me, is the looking at and remembering the rituals my Mom (mostly) loved to plan, celebrate, and share. She loved choosing and decorating the tree. She had boxes and boxes and boxes of ornaments and lights and decorations that she would have my Dad bring up from the basement and down from the upstairs front bedroom. She had ornaments from each of of us 4 kids, from kindergarten up through middle school (which is when we started complaining about craft time and cleaning and prepping for company). My favorite ones were the handprints of each of us hanging there waving at us through the years, reminding us that we were little ones, and we would always be Moms babies…
Christmas cookies were a whole deal for Mom. She made everyones favorite, snickerdoodles, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, molasses, and my favorite were her potato cookies with homemade raspberry currant jam (that I always helped preserve in the late summer).
But her favorite holiday ritual was the famous Holiday Newsletter that she included in all of her holiday cards. My Mom (type A organized personality) had a box of address for holiday cards, and then when she retired from Cornell she typed them all up and saved them in her file “Christmas Card List”. As my folks got older then began getting cards returned from friends who passed on, or moved without updating their address. Mom would keep those cards in her top drawer and every February 1st she would update her list.
Getting back to the ritual of the Holiday cards… Mom and Dad would keep a notebook all year long with things that they had done, experiences they wanted to share with dear lifelong friends, accomplishments, changes, losses, joys, exciting stories of travel and kids and grandkids happenings. And one whole weekend every first weekend in December, they would go through the notebook, and write their holiday newsletter. They would close out the rest of the world, turn off the ringer on the phone, drink hot holiday toddys, and reminisce over the year that they had enjoyed.
It was always a joy to get their newsletter. Some things I knew, but often Mom and Dad would include little tender stories that had not made it to our phone conversations, or Thanksgiving Family meal. And they would illustrate these newsletters with photos they had taken.
Even though we don’t celebrate Christmas in the way my folks did – no tree, or decorations, and we usually go to the movies on Christmas day after a quiet meal together, instead of opening presents and going to Christmas eve Services – I am feeling like this holiday ritual might just make into our holiday traditions… Because when I think about this I smile. I laugh. And my grief doesn’t feel so heavy!
Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas friends. May you revel in your connections, and choose the rituals that fill your spirit with joy and help you remember with tears of joy the people who have moved on, and also those who remain!
Love, Aniiyah
